Incompetent Elected Officials

“Forget Jobs, It’s You Passing Out In Public, Stupid!”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Well, maybe there’s something wrong with Wisconsin after all.

Mayor Ryan, behaving irrelevantly

In Sheboygan, Mayor Bob Ryan, is about to face Terry Van Akkeren in the first mayoral recall election in that Wisconsin city’s history. It was prompted after Ryan was caught on tape passed out in a bar after a drinking binge last summer. More than 4,000 Sheboygan voters signed petitions to force the recall.

As one would expect, the mayor who humiliated his community, set a wretched example for his public (and their kids), showed that he has allowed his alcohol problem to render him unfit to serve, and violated a pledge he had made in 2009 (when he was running for office) that he had given up drinking for good, now argues that the incident is irrelevant. He says that what matters is who can bring the most jobs back to Sheboygan. Continue reading →

Reflections On President’s Day, 2012: A United States Diminished in Power, Influence and Ideals

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Rep. Ron Paul is fond of saying that the United States shouldn’t be the world’s policeman, and thanks to irresponsible stewardship of America’s resources and horrific maintenance of its ideals, his wish has already come true. One result is a world that has no functioning opposition to evil, a world at the mercy of chaos with no champion or guiding inspiration in sight. The other result is a United States that no longer stands for its own founding principles.

For proof, we have only to look as far as Syria, where a brutal dictator is killing his own people at an accelerating rate. Although his people have tired of his tyranny, Hafez al-Assad, like Gaddafi before him, seems determined to kill as many of his own countrymen as he has to in order to stay in power. Our President, Barack Obama, has delivered stern admonitions and disapprovals, which is this President’s style and approximately as effective as tossing water balloons. The Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, expresses frustration, for all the good that does. The killing, of course, goes on.

If you think I’m going to advocate U.S. action in Syria, you are wrong. Quite simply, we can’t afford it—not with a Congress and an Administration that appear unwilling and unable to confront rising budget deficits and crushing debt with sensible tax reform and unavoidable entitlement reductions. Yesterday Congress and the President passed yet another government hand-out of money it doesn’t have and refuses to raise elsewhere, among other things continuing to turn unemployment insurance, once a short-term cushion for job-seekers, into long-term government compensation for the unemployed. Part of the reckless debt escalation was caused by the last President unconscionably engaging in overseas combat in multiple theaters without having the courage or sense  to insist that the public pay for it, and the current administration is incapable of grasping that real money, not just borrowed funds, needs to pay for anything. The needle is well into the red zone on debt; we don’t have the resources for any discretionary military action.

Ron Paul thinks that’s a good thing, as do his libertarian supporters. President Obama, it seems, thinks similarly. They are tragically wrong. Though it is a popular position likely to be supported by the fantasists who think war can just be wished away, the narrowly selfish who think the U.S. should be an island fortress, and those to whom any expenditure that isn’t used to expand  cradle-to-grave government care is a betrayal of human rights, the abandonment of America’s long-standing world leadership in fighting totalitarianism, oppression, murder and genocide is a catastrophe for both the world and us. Continue reading →

Dear Former Rep. Dahlkemper: Oh, Shut Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Actually, this is just a cartoon of the former Congresswoman from Erie, but then a Toon could have cast a vote for a bill without reading it too.

Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, voted for the health care mega-law in 2010. Now she says she would have never voted for the  bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the “week-after” pill .

In a press release sent out while the HHS ruling was still pending, the pro-life Dahlkemper said,

“I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,. We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage.”

To which I reply, “Oh, shut up!” Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Indiana State Senator Dennis Kruse

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Time to reconsider the Greek Gods...because the oldest theories are the best theories.

Indiana State Senator Dennis Kruse is responsible for Senate Bill 89, recently passed by the Indiana Senate, which would allow schools to teach “creation science” — the oxymoron that really means “The Bible” —as an alternative to the scientific Theory of Evolution. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically outlawed this fundamentalist aganda in the 1987 court decision Edwards v. Aguillard. Kruse however, thinks that the bill could lead to a court challenge, and a Supreme Court reversal. “This is a different Supreme Court,” he has said. “This Supreme Court could rule differently.”

It isn’t that different, Senator. They all have law degrees, they’ve all read the Constitution,they’ve all seen “Jurassic Park.” They all have IQs above freezing, unlike…well, never mind. By the way, Kruse is a Republican, as if you hadn’t guessed. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Week: Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

I know, I know. Soylent Green isn't the same thing, because embryos aren't people.

This need not take very long.. Ethics Alarms hasn’t honored an incompetent public official for a while, and Oklahoma freshman Sen. Ralph Shortey (R) has pretty much begged for this. You see, Sen. Shortey, citing his own Internet research [oh-oh...], believes that there is a looming threat of food companies using ground-up aborted fetuses in their products, and thus has proposed a bill that decrees that…

“…No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.“

Even though absolutely nobody else knows of any hint or rumor that Embryo Helper or anything similar is poised to hit the shelves, Sen. Shortey says that he introduced the bill as a warning to companies who might otherwise consider putting boxes of Fetus Frosted Flakes on Oklahoma breakfast tables, and to raise “public awareness.”

Let’s hope Shortey is successful, at least at raising public awareness that the man is an idiot, and can no more be trusted to determine public policy than my dog should be playing bassoon in the New York Philharmonic. Really…where do the political parties do their recruitment, anyway? How can they even locate people this unhinged from reality and their responsibilities? America is in need of innovative, well-executed measures to pull itself out of an epic funk, with crises in all directions, from the budget, to the infrastructure, to employment and housing, to education, immigration and the environment, and this maroon’s top priority is battling cannibalism?

Way to pick ’em, Republicans.

Creating Captain Costanzas

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Metaphor

I think I stopped finding George Costanza funny when I saw the “Seinfeld” episode in which he panicked at a kids party after smelling smoke and trampled the children rushing to be the first out the door. (His callous reaction to his fiancée’s death from licking envelopes had paved the way for my inability to laugh at George.) The thought of a real-life George Costanza, the most unethical character on a show about unethical characters, serving as the captain of an imperiled ship full of passengers is horrifying, but that’s basically what befell the unsuspecting tourists on board the cruise ship that tipped over after hitting a rock off the coast of Italy. Having caused the accident, it appears, by irresponsibly changing course, captain Francesco Schettino hit the life boats before most of his passengers, and claimed to be directing the evacuation from the relative safety of a lifeboat as he defied orders from the Italian Coast Guard to return to the ship. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero AND Ethics Dunce: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar scores a rare twin honor: He is an Ethics Dunce and an Ethics Hero in the same week.

Occupier, or just a vistor, Mr. Secretary?

First the good news, the Ethics Hero part.  Salazar has given the National Park Service  30 days to fix the inaccurate, misleading and truncated quotation on the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. He did this after giving the inept King Memorial Foundation plenty of time to do its job. It didn’t, and he took the initiative. Harry Johnson, president of the Foundation, told the AP he wasn’t sure what changes could be made. Well, how about using a real quote instead of a made-up one that makes Martin Luthor King sound like a preening Newt Gingrich?

Chiseled into the monument’s left flank because there wasn’t room for the actual quote is “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” What King really said in a 1968  speech was: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” When Maya Angelou and others complained that the pompous-sounding non-quote make King sound like a boasting egotist (and one speaking from the grave!), the Foundation shrugged and erected the monument unchanged. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Indiana State Senator Vaneta Becker

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

"All right, Jimi, you're busted. That will be $25!"

Indiana State Senator Vaneta Becker wants to establish a law that would impose a fine of $25 on any performer or citizen who significantly alters the lyrics or melody of The Star-Spangled Banner.  “I don’t think the National Anthem is something we ought to be joking around with,” she has said. “Singing our national anthem is a sign of gratitude to those who have served our country.”

One may notice a theme among those chosen here as incompetent elected officials: the complete unfamiliarity with core American values and ideals, often displayed in a misguided effort to protect those values. This is known as “ignorance,” or perhaps, in extreme cases, “utter stupidity.”  My presumption is that being ignorant or stupid renders an official incompetent to discharge the duties of lawmaking. Am I expecting too much? Continue reading →

The Loudon County Courthouse Christmas Display Fiasco: Anatomy of an Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Believe it or not, this is a train wreck.

In Loudon County, Virginia, the county board didn’t want to let Christmas displays on the courthouse lawn go down without a fight. Once upon a time a community could put up Santa and his sleigh without a militant anti-religion or non-Christian group threatening law suits, but no longer, especially in a community so close to Attorney Central, Washington, D.C.  Other communities have gotten away with pan-religious displays—a pretty silly solution, I think, since Christmas is a Christian and secular holiday but has exactly nothing to do with Islam, Buddhism or the others—but again, once atheists organized and pressed the issue that the state supporting all religion was tantamount to promoting a religion, “inclusive” displays must be open to groups actively hostile to the religious displayers. Can we guess what will happen in such an environment? Yes? Well, the Loudon County board couldn’t.

A sensible board-appointed citizen group, the Courthouse Grounds and Facilities Committee, recommended in December 2009 that the county ban courthouse displays. The board rejected the committee’s request.  In July 2010,  the committee again requested a ban be put in place on courthouse lawn displays. The board, in its infinite wisdom, decided that anyone could put up displays on the lawn with ten spots open on a first-come, first-serve basis, pending county approval.

Yes, this was bound to turn out well, pull the community together, and promote the good feelings of the holiday season! Thus we reached Stage One in our ethics train wreck: official incompetence. The board’s actions lit the fuse of a cultural bomb, and only a Christmas miracle could have kept it from detonating.

So the displays were duly allotted thusly:

You can see two nativity scenes, the predictable Flying Spaghetti Monster display ridiculing all religion, the atheist display, and other benign additions. Hmmmm...but what, pray tell, is the “Santa cross?” Oh, just this… Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: California State Senator Ted Lieu

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Sen. Lieu wants Lowe's to see things his way...or else.

In what is beginning to look like a full-blown ethics train wreck, the Florida Family Association’s attack on TLC’s “All-American Muslim” reality show has claimed its first victim among the show’s defenders: California State Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat. The incident inspired him to out himself as a Constitutionally ignorant bully who can’t be trusted with legislative power. Thanks, Florida Family Association!

This was only after Lowe’s, the lumber, hardware, garden supply chain, outed itself as a sniveling confederacy of unprincipled cowards by caving to the FFA’s boycott threat, a threat motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry and nothing else. Lowe’s pulled its sponsorship of the show, muttering nonsense about how the show was controversial and how such controversies should be left to communities to hash out, which was a non sequitur and offensive, as it suggested that whether or not bigotry is acceptable in America is a valid debate topic, and that Lowe’s has no opinion on the matter. How refreshing it would be if a company like Lowe’s, capitulating to a boycott threat, came right out and said, Continue reading →